Monday, September 04, 2006

Even More Unreliapiundit Stomping Fun

As per usual, Unreliapundit's crying is much more pronounced than his arguments. His latest protest is that his blog is becoming clogged with my long comments. The series of tubes that Ted Stevens has told him that his blog is powered by apparently does not have the capacity to transmit my verbiage. In defernce to his creaky infrastructure, here are my latest responses to his bizarre assertions, linked to from his comments.

"The researchers identified three large areas of the Pacific where phytoplankton appeared to be suffering from a lack of iron - the southern ocean around Antarctica, the sub-arctic north below Alaska, and a vast area in the tropical Pacific cent[e]red on the equator."

Unreliapundit -- if these three areas were healthy - as the rest of the world's plankton apparently is, then these three large areas would be sequestering more co2.then, it follows necessarily, that there would be less atmospheric co2.

Yes, if these plankton had more iron, and this didn't cause them to be consumed more by fish (as was a potential feedback loop noted in the article), then they could potentially be holding more CO2. But this isn't a "cause" of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, as you ridiculously continue to believe below, any more than the fact that more CO2 could be dissolved in the ocean than is currently there is a "cause".

"if atmospheric co2 contributes to global warming - something which is unproven (especially in view of known historical and pre-historical eras of warming an cooling)"So, you're denying that the greenhouse effect exists? Very smart.

"then these three unhealthy areas of plankton might be a major cause."There you go again with the "cause." If the plankton iron levels haven't changed over time (and you have already admitted that we have no reason to believe that they have), then how can their lack of change "cause" anything? The most that you can say is that the plankton could potentially be holding more CO2 than it is. It's like looking at a field that's been empty for 100 years and calling it a "cause" of CO2 in the atmosphere because it could have trees on it instead of being barren.

"since there are many known eras of global warming which predate industrialism and man-made co2 it is reasonable to assume that similar non-anthropgenic forces might be causing warming today."Let's say that all eras of global warming and cooling had a cause or causes. Some of them may have been the same. Some of them may have been different. Let's further assume that the causes are knowable and measurable. This is not to say that we necessarily know the causes or have measured them, just that they're not caused by extra-dimensional fairies, or the storm god Thor, or something like that.

Part of what scientists do is try to make these measurements and determine the reasons behind these changes. Based on what they learn, they make predictions of future behavior and create models of the environmental system. In this case, here's what they observed, measured, and concluded:

2) The measured level of atmospheric CO2 is increasing at approximately the same rate.

3) The greenhouse effect, which was a well understood and well-documented scientific principle long before the current debate, states that CO2 in the atmosphere is partially responsible for the absorption of radiation from the planet back into space. The more energy that is absorbed, the greater the warming. The more CO2, the greater the absorption.

4) Over the past few decades, especially as the CO2 increase has grown to a significant portion of the CO2 level in the atmosphere, the global temperature has risen.

5) Models and theories are often judged on their predictability. How well do they predict what will happen. The theory of gravity predicts that if I hold a pencil 5 feet off the earth and let it go, it will fall towards the earth. Similarly, the theory of global warming has predicted global climate change quite accurately since the theory has been refined and accepted.

You say that, "it is reasonable to assume that similar non-anthropogenic forces might be causing warming today," but there is nothing that has been observed or measured that has been changing in such a fashion to explain the warming. So, why is it more reasonable to think this is caused by other unobserved factors than by the observed and measurable factors? In 1995, the IPCC said, "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." In 2001, they revisited the question, based on 6 more years of evidence and said, "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". However, you still want to make an ass out of you[rself], and assume what you fervently want to believe, clearly being more qualified than thousands of scientists that have studied this for years.

"also hajckass joe: please nopte the use of the word SERIOUSLY in my post. which most SANE people undertand measn to take the previous staement with a graion of salt.I took this to apply to the immediately preceeding line, "What will Gore do about this, give iron supplements to ocean algae!?", not your entire article. If you did mean your whole article as a joke (even more of a joke than every other article you've ever written, I mean), then I wonder why you have tried to defend it repeatedly, only now remembering that the whole thing was just a joke.

"you didn't GET IT and commented AD NAUSEUM to my joke as if it was a serious comment with crap i won't bother to sift through because it'd be a waste of my time."Ah yes, the "I can't waste my time" defense. In one post you lay down a challenge to prove global warming is man-made. In the next, you can't be bothered to read my long, difficult-for-you-to-comprehend arguments because you might miss out on writing another joke article.